To regret leaving my coercively controlling ex-husband

[Hellodarknessmyfriend]

Now I see my sons far less as "punishment", should I have stayed for their sake?

He sounds vile. I wouldn't want my child to spend a huge amount of time with an abuser. Bonus I would say.

@PTSDBarbiegirl I've spent literally thousands doing this unfortunately; so much so I'm still in privately rented a decade on. Only one child under court arrangement now but he is under father's control. We did have Cafcass involved but they were appalling and failed to see the control (ex is incredibly manipulative but very cleverly so).
@the2andahalfmillion I was told I should never do this because it would not be in best interests. My youngest is still under order so if father got wind I was telling them about the control in our marriage he would simply make things even more unbearable.
I will have to wait, but ultimately the damage has already been done.

@Piddypigeon They do as he has majority custody.

But how much of them seeing you is really down to him? It's natural for 17yr olds to spend less time with their parents. Probably the same for 14 yr old too and surely you having the younger one wed to Sunday means you have the majority of time with him?

I know it's game playing, but the best way to get to see your dc more is to start living your life. If your ex sees you starting to date, seeing friends and enjoying yourself without the dc, he'll start trying to disrupt this and the best way he can do this is to start ensuring you can't go out. He does this by enforcing the 50/50 rule about you having the dc.

My ex decided to go for 50/50, I said 'great, I can start at the gym, see friends and start hobbies' he was so pissed off that I'd be happy and enjoying myself, he said he only wanted the dc every other weekend. Little did he know that's actually what I wanted. But I knew the minute he knew I wanted them during the week, would be the time he'd suddenly want them all the time.

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy Sorry - should have put every other Weds-Sun. Well should be, at least.
It's been like this for years now, not just recently.

@BuggeryBumFlaps I'm remarried now (as is he), but that in itself caused huge issues. He told boys to be wary because husband was "probably a paedophile." Sons were also told it would be highly disrespectful to him to attend my wedding. One child came but was in trouble for it.

He is a vile man indeed. Now the dc are getting older I'm sure they will eventually realise what an awful, despicable man he is. Bide your time op, you set a good example to your dc about what they should and shouldn't put up with

I just want to validate how you are feeling because you'll get well meaning responses from people who haven't necessarily experienced this. I sometimes feel the same way although my ex does not see them as much as 50/50 but it is used as a stick to beat you with and further control you. You are terrified of what he is doing with them and saying and you cannot protect them at all. You feel selfish that you've left them unprotected for your own sanity.

Having said all this, you matter too. You are providing them warmth, safety and love when they are with you and they will be adults soon enough and they can choose. Will either of them talk to anyone, counselling etc to see their father's behaviour for what it is? I'm assuming that he's coercively controlling them too?

Do you plant the seeds to the elder one about how they can rent their own place soon? Don't know the circs but you should start opening his eyes to the external world and maybe he will break away from his dad!

@hellodarknessmyoldfriend Your sons are young men. They don't bother that much with the parents at that age, even when they live at home.

Being the non-resident parent, you see quite a bit of your 17 year old. 4 days every other week is not bad going for a 17 year old. You don't say specifics about contact with your 14 year old, so I can't comment..

Yes, I do have experience, a whole lifetime up to fleeing the ex 24 years ago. Childhood was the same, so I simply recreated what I know.

I left it way too long to leave. Mine were coming up 16 years and 4 youngsters. 3 of them are 15, 13, 11, and the youngest 4.

We went through the fires of hell with the aftermath. My youngsters also had to spend a period in care as we were hidden homeless, and my mental health was fcuked. Children SS were a nightmare. The system is needed. The system doesn't work. Still doesn't.

You know what for all that hell, my only regret was I didn't leave years before. I told him "I didn't care what happened or where we went as long as we were safe and away from him" I didn't expect the chain of events that happened however no regrets at leaving.

You will probably think it's different for you. Look for the similarities. Not the differences.

Whose to say what he could have done next if you had stayed. Your youngsters may have grown up with no parents. Yes, I'm being blunt here as I would like you to look at it from other angles.

The years would have taken its toll on your mental health staying. Your boys would have grown up knowing it was OK to behave how their dad is.

You could have wound up dead (nearly ave 3 women a week die because of domestic abuse, which includes coercive abuse) sectioned, a lot of poorer mental health. If that had been the case, he would have been in prison, and you were dead is one example.

If you had stayed, your mental health would have worsened. You probably would have turned to alcohol or something to cope.

These are just a few of the things that could have happened.

I think specialist counselling would help as you do indeed live with the aftermath of domestic abuse. We all do. Even 24 years on, happily remarried, happy adult youngsters with good jobs, married, etc, and my grandchildren, etc. the ex long gone, and in none of the adult youngsters lives, I still live with the aftermath.

I have significant mental health issues, granted more managed today than they manage me, physical health conditions triggered by Complex PTSD and others.

You're still living with the aftermath. You need to keep punishing yourself, though. I suspect you feel you deserve to feel like this. You don't.

Get in touch with Womens Aid, please, and get some help. It is the aftermath of domestic abuse you need help with, and they can support you. They also signpost and do therapy themselves. Link below.

If you think you don't deserve it, your sons do. They still need their mom. Just in different ways. We don't stop parenting as they grow or/and living arrangements change. The role just changes.

www.womensaid.org.uk/

@BuggeryBumFlaps Thank you. Well the way women are treated in this household is absolutely poles apart from his, so all I do is pray that they will see right from wrong (although of course them being with him the majority they do perhaps see his way as the "norm"?)
Hubby and I do our absolute best to challenge the racist/sexist/homophobic rhetoric but it's not easy.

I know a woman in your position and I know a man like your ex. In the woman's situation, she's counting down until they are 18. Your children are adults longer than they are children and they will come back to you. As for the man, his adult children play the game of favouritism, to his face. Behind the scenes, they know who the better parent was. He thinks that he gets small victories, but nothing will make him happy. If you would have stayed, you'd be teaching your boys that abuse is acceptable. You could have list them as adults and they be LC with their future family.

@keffie12 14 yo is every other Weds-Sun, 17 yo is just EOW.
Thank you so very much for your kind words and empathy; it means so very much.
I have had to park my own MH as much as possible to fight but ultimately it was in vain.
I was told I must, under no circumstances, cry in court.
My new husband is patient but as I know you will understand, what happened has left me with significant trust issues.

Family court, in the UK, upholds and perpetuates abuse. At its core, family court is the absolute definition of systemic misogyny, just like the Met. And mothers are imprisoned, held captive, by a system that consistently undermines the importance of our role as mothers, destroys the already threadbare trust between separated parents, and exacerbates the ongoing weaponisation of children in cases, giving zero fucks about the longterm emotional instability and trust issues those children will carry into adult life, created by abusive parents and upheld by the court’s bad decision to predominantly support and empathise with the abuser. And oh yeah, CAFCASS can go fuck itself twice over. What a wasteful resource.

You have my arsenal of sympathy OP. And I’m sad that because your voice was invalidated and unheard because the abuser’s was louder and raucous (men like the sound of their own voices and the predominantly male world of the justice system and family courts will be full of male judges liking the sounds coming from their own kind- birds of a feather- and women who have forgotten how to empathise with their own), you now live with the weight of deep regret. I hope you can find peace in your day. Your love for your boys counts for everything. I hope it’s enough to undo the damage their father has undeniably inflicted upon them. I hope time will be your ally and your sons will rise from the ashes of their father’s deceit. Courage OP. Live to love your sons, if nothing else. I wish I had a solution for you. Love has to be enough, even when we doubt its power.

@SerenityNowInsanityLater Thank you. Your post has made me cry. I don't think my trauma has ever been validated so I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I wish it got easier, but now once again I'm trying to put on a brave face as my sons go back to that vile excuse of a human being.

@Hellodarknessmyfriend That's the problem. We fight and try to stave off the mental health side, and it doesn't help. It just supresses it, so it comes out sidewards and, in many cases, worse.

Oh God, the old British stiff upper lip, of chin up, be strong does nothing to help.

I've had on/off years of different and specialist therapy. What I've learnt about tears are that they are healthy and a surrender/acceptance of what is. If we weren't meant to cry , we wouldn't have tear ducts. I had to learn to cry.

I'm glad you found happiness again with a good man, as I have too. If you had stayed, you would never have found the love and stability you have now. Remember that 💖

Many Boys at 14-18 won't see the bigger picture, they'll see him as a good dad. Hopefully the enlightenment may come later. Hang on in there. Even I didn't probably appreciate how great my mum always was until much later.

@keffie12 Thank you. In one of my darkest days I wrote a goodbye letter to my sons and honestly - had that Samaritan on the end of the phone line been as incredibly kind - the outcome would have been different. Not that my sons would have ever been allowed to see that letter, but it felt cathartic telling my side of the story. Like a release. The tears finally came that day.
I've still got the letter as I don't feel ready to let it go yet (hope that doesn't sound strange?)

@Hellodarknessmyfriend Why would it sound strange? You're not ready to let it go.

Perhaps a part of you wants the reminder of where you once were as an indicator to where you were once and you don't want to go there again.

That's another way your sons could have lost you if you hadn't got out, as you would have been more and more suicidal had you stayed.

You're a good mom as you are there for your children and provide the love and stability they don't see at home. They will know it within even if they don't express it outwardly.

They have your husband and you as loving, stable, happy parents. They will know the difference

Oh OP. It’s so sad. Your sense of purpose has been so undermined. We live in a society that puts so much value on the aesthetics of being mothers and parents, but what people don’t know until they experience court is how erased motherhood has been. We’ve supposedly levelled the playing field by being inclusive to dads and therefore co parenting ‘as a team’. But the mother, the heart of the world, really is being erased. If we stay at home to raise children to be functional and empathetic members of society, we’re seen as lazy, financial non contributors (even though we’re voluntary cooks, therapists, doctors, entertainers, listeners, cleaners… we are the family scaffolding and nobody can argue with me on that). And when the marital shit hits the fan, husbands/fathers immediately go for the jugular: “Well, I went out and earned. You stayed home with the kids. You did NOTHING! I’ll drown you in court with my financial strongarm.”

If we work and outsource childcare, we’re accused of being disinterested in our children, shirking responsibility, chasing careers, being selfish. Mothers can’t win and the family courts depressingly prove this time and again by listening to embittered, abusive fathers controlling the narrative and poisoning the mother’s reputation at any cost, regardless of the loss the children will carry (and mum too, this goes without saying). How much we lose to a system that costs us our reputation is a heartache most mothers, very fortunately, will not be able to relate to.

Sorry, I worry that I’m deviating from the thread a bit by shouting from my soapbox. But you’ve forgotten your worth and your place. That makes me so sad for you. 😔
That letter you wrote is invaluable. That letter is your resistance. Your tears are bullets! I risk falling into a pit of purple prose here, OP, but you have hope, you have love, you have resistance. Your sons would be subjected to their dad’s same terrible influence had you stayed together. Believe me, from experience (I stayed far too long), I got a front row seat watching me NOT protect my children from their abuser. Quite the shitshow that I stayed far too long at the fair for. I get to live with my failure. You have emancipated yourself. And your sons still have access to your liberating love, which they may not always know because they’re still kids, but they feel it to the bones, believe me.

@SerenityNowInsanityLater I'm so sorry you've been through this hell too. Like me, you did what you believed was best for your children in an absolutely impossible situation. There is no right or wrong.
I hope your relationship with your children is good now? 💐

You were still right to leave. That wasn't a life.

But I know only too well that you don't really "escape" from someone like that, as they just find new ways. And my heart breaks for you

Yes I was told not to cry in court too. It's mind boggling.
The family courts are a strange and topsy turvy world and I am sorry you had to experience it.